But there is a great deal of improper feeding of infants which, apparently due to ignorance, is in reality due to other causes, and the same is true of what appears to be neglect. In every large city there are hundreds of married women and mothers who must work to keep the family income up to the level of sufficiency for the maintenance of its members. According to the census of 1900 there were 769,477 married women “gainfully employed” in the United States, but there is every reason to believe that the actual number was much greater, for it is a well-known fact that married women, especially in factories, often represent themselves as being single, for the reason, possibly, that it is considered more or less of a disgrace to have to continue working after marriage. Moreover, it is certain that many thousands of women who work irregularly, a day or two a week, or, as in many cases, only at intervals during the sickness or unemployment of their husbands, were omitted. A million would probably be well within the mark as an estimate of the number of married women workers, the census figures notwithstanding. These working mothers may be conveniently divided into two classes, the home workers, such as dressmakers, “finishers” employed in the clothing trades, and many others; and the many thousands who are employed away from their homes in cigar-making, cap-making, the textile industries, laundry work, and a score of other occupations including domestic service. The proportion of married women having small children is probably larger among those employed in the home industries than in those which are carried on outside of the homes. Out of 748 female home “finishers” in New York, for instance, 658 were married and 557 had from one to seven children each.[26] The percentage could hardly equal that in the outside industries. While there are exceptional cases, as a rule no married woman, especially if she has young children, will go out to work unless forced to do so by sheer necessity. Dr. Annie S. Daniel, in a most interesting study of the conditions in 515 families where the wives worked as finishers, found that no less than 448, or 86.78 per cent of the whole, were obliged to work by reason of poverty arising from low wages, frequent unemployment, or sickness of their husbands. Of the other 67 cases, 45 of the women were widows, 15 had been deserted, and 7 had husbands who were intemperate and shiftless. Of all causes low wages was the most common, the average weekly income of the men being only $3.81. The average of the combined weekly earnings of man and wife was $4.85, and rent, which averaged $8.99 per month, absorbed almost one-half of this. In addition to the earnings of the men and women, there were other smaller sources of income, such as children’s wages and money received from lodgers, which brought the average income per family of 4½ persons up to $5.69 per week.[27] [Illustration: